


Carry that Weight

by thelastperformer



Category: Flashpoint (TV)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Gen, Sam is mentioned, Suicidal Thoughts, Winnie is there, mildly suicidal, the ending is not entirely unhappy?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-07
Updated: 2020-01-07
Packaged: 2021-02-27 08:01:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,103
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22153687
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thelastperformer/pseuds/thelastperformer
Summary: A heart's a heavy burden.But guilt is heavier.Sleep pretty darling, do not cry.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 11





	Carry that Weight

**Author's Note:**

> This story deals heavily with death and thoughts of suicide, guilt, and mildly suicidal actions. Please read with care.
> 
> Originally inspired bc I thought Greg and Spike's conversation in the truck in "The Good Citizen" ep was implying something else, so that's what I depicted here.

After a while, Spike had learned to live with the guilt.

He was partner-less, best friend-less, father-less, and guilt-ridden.

But most days the weight of guilt and loneliness was bearable. There was nobody he could go to, nobody who could help him shoulder the weight, (a weight transfer, like with Lew—he began, then stopped himself—) nobody to share his feelings with. So he bore it on his own, and he learned to live with it.

Some days it was heavier.

The day that Sergeant Greg Parker was abducted, the guilt was unreasonably heavy.

Spike felt it in a tightness in his chest, a shortness of breath, an urgency across the breadth of his shoulders and down his arms, into his fists, around the grip of his gun. He felt it in the emptiness at his side that shouldn’t have been there—an emptiness that caused every other sensation he was feeling when they realized what had happened to their boss.

He couldn’t help Lew.

His father wouldn’t speak to him. Was dying.

He couldn’t lose his boss.

He had to do something.

* * *

The tension eased, for a while, after he’d been saved. Until Greg cornered him in the truck, signaled for Spike to take out his earpiece.

He did so tentatively. “’sup?” he asked.

“You tell me.”

Spike looked for the answer around the truck. He tried to think of a joke, but came up empty. “Uh, I don’t… know. Busy… workin’…”

“Coming out of my house this morning and two, high-ranking security agents wanna take me out for coffee,” the boss began simply. Accusingly.

“Oh.” Spike inhaled. His face defaulted into that surprisingly good stone-face as he matched gazes with Greg. “That.”

“Yeah. That.” He raised his brows, his face an expression of anger and annoyance. “They wanna talk to me about you.”

Damn. “It’s not what you think.”

“No?”

“No.”

“Okay.” He huffed a sigh. “We’ll pick this up later, alright?”

Spike had never felt so grateful for the urgency of another person’s tragedy, and he felt guilt on him like a pair of heavy hands on his shoulders.

* * *

He tried to rush out after debrief, hoping maybe the boss had forgotten.

No such luck.

“Spike!” he called from the briefing room.

And so he went. Greg opened his hands as he sat in his chair at the head of the table, opening the floor for conversation. (Very dad like, he thought fondly, but realized this wasn’t the time or the place.) “Anything you want to tell me, Spike?”

He shook his head, his lips pressed thin, held his ground about two meters away from his boss. “Nope.”

“Wanna try that again?”

"Nope.”

The boss sighed, crossing his hands in front of him. “Your friends in security tell me they’re worried about you,” he began when he realized Spike wasn’t going to willingly give anything up.

That stone-face again. Intense eyes and brows, downturned mouth. He was good at masking his emotions, even for the best negotiator in the force. If it wasn’t jokes, it was this.

“They said you asked them to keep an eye on me.”

“Just for a few days.”

“Until what, Spike?”

He shrugged.

"They can’t watch me 24/7. I can take care of myself, you know, I’m a grown man,” he said.

Spike kept his face steady. “I know that.”

“What’s this about?”

He couldn’t say it. He couldn’t say it was about Lew. Did his boss know anyway, without him saying?

(Somehow, he didn’t think so.)

"Hayley,” Spike said instead. “You can’t be so careless, you know.”

Greg rolled his eyes. “Spike…”

“People are counting on you,” he said. “I know you got an earful from Jules already, I’m not gonna give you more.”

“Really? ‘Cause that’s what it sounds like you’re building up to.” He spun his chair in a half circle, an annoyed tick so he didn’t have to see Spike.

Spike didn’t have the stomach for this. How could he yell at his boss? Was he trying to get fired? He felt like he was choking. There was cramping in his stomach, ever since Greg Parker was abducted. (Even since before then.)

“I’m just saying—,” Spike began, his voice fast and high strung, “—this mildly suicidal act doesn’t suit you. If you think you deserve to be punished for something, you know, you’re wrong.”

Greg turned back to him, eyes running over Spike’s face, looking for anything that might give away what he was thinking of.

“Some people still need you, Boss. Whatever mistakes you think you’ve made, you’ve more than made up for them.”

Greg didn’t answer.

Spike took that as an answer to leave, but his boss stopped him.

“Hold on, Spike,” he said. “Mildly suicidal?”

He sighed, spinning back around, raising his arms in a shrug. “It’s not like jumping off a bridge. But you knew it was dangerous. You knew it was a bad decision. You knew the risks and you went anyway, knowing what might happen. You see it happen every day, Boss.”

Greg nodded, his eyes drifting off to the side. “I know.”

"I gotta get home. Ma’ll be waiting for me.”

Greg waved to dismiss him.

“I’ll call off the hounds.” Spike forced a laugh, but the invisible hands of guilt felt heavy on his shoulders. He felt them creeping up, around his neck.

* * *

When he met Mac again, it felt like a relief of all his worries, like he was absolved of all his sins. He could help McCoy out of his car. He had a handle of the situation.

It slipped out of his fingers, around his neck like a noose, when he disappeared. The possibility of his mentor, of somebody he could rely on, being a dirty cop.

No, Mac was a good cop.

A good man—trying to protect his daughter. They knew this, they realized this. Spike didn’t have to convince them, to try to save the man’s reputation. Now he just had to save his daughter. He just had to save Mac’s life.

But he failed, and Spike was there when he died.

His mentor—the man who taught him everything—died in front of him. In his arms.

Again, Spike was helpless to help somebody he loved.

Again, Spike was right there, just short of being able to do anything.

And again, Spike felt the crushing weight of guilt in his chest, around his neck, behind his eyes.

* * *

As Spike sat outside his father’s hospital room, the silence felt suffocating.

The losses from work were getting tangled in his personal life.

Not a single person in the team knew his father was dying. Lew would have known, he thought, he could have told him. (It was always Lew, at moments like this.) But it was because of Lew that he couldn’t even talk to his father.

Trauma was never supposed to hit him like this.

If it was the ghosts of people the team lost, things they saw, sure—they could deal with that stuff together. They could talk. There were groups.

But like this, he couldn’t bring it up. Everybody else had gotten over it. They didn’t understand. They lost a teammate, but they didn’t lose a partner, a best friend, and it wasn’t _their fault_. If he ever mentioned it, they hushed him, gave him those pitiful eyes and acted like they understood that he was in pain. But they didn’t—couldn’t—see the hands crushing his windpipes so he couldn’t even choke out an explanation that he should have died that day.

He knew there was a risk of dying out in the field. He knew that. The team knew that.

But it should have been him, not Lew.

His father should be grieving, not dying.

He nearly compromised the case with Mac.

Everything was too much without the immediacy of work, the adrenaline of somebody else’s tragedy in front of him.

Spike left that day without seeing his father.

* * *

It all came out with Toth.

He tried to hide it. Damn it—he tried. He thought he was good.

But the word “bomb” was always Lew.

The word “bomb” was always guilt.

Borrowed time.

An opportunity to die.

Like his father was.

Like everybody around him was.

* * *

His boss must not have expected it. He had other things to deal with. Like Ed. Like Sam and Jules.

It took a few days, but Greg circled back around to Spike.

“Hey, hold back,” he’d said, catching Spike by the arm. With a small gesture of his hand, he beckoned Spike into the briefing room. “How’s, uh… how’s it going?”

“It’s, uh… going, Boss.”

“How’s your dad?”

He internally rolled his eyes. “He’s good. Thanks for asking.”

Greg leaned back on the table, sitting down on it. He gestured for Spike to take a seat. He didn’t.

“Look, if you need some time…” he started.

“Boss.” Spike’s voice was harsher than he meant for it to be. He tried to ease up. “If this is about my loyalty to the team, don’t worry. I’m all in. I’m not leaving.”

“No, no,” Greg said gently. “I have no doubt about your loyalty.”

Spike sank slowly into the offered seat and the heavy silence of the briefing room. It was large and cold without the rest of the team crowding around them. Most of the lights were off and it was dark and Spike just wished he could go home and sleep.

“After the incident with Hayley, you said what I did was mildly suicidal.”

Spike nodded.

Greg’s eyebrows shot up. He spoke to him like he was talking to a subject. “What do you call what you’re doing?”

“I follow every procedure, Boss. I don’t know what you want me to say.”

“I want you to be honest with me, Spike. It’s been a rough year for all of us, but I’m starting to see it might be harder on you than I thought. You know you can talk to me, right?”

He nodded. “I know.”

“So talk.”

A defense mechanism kicked in and he laughed. “About what? Not much news between here and the hospital, you know. Especially if your dad won’t talk to you.”

“Talk to me about Lew.”

“No.”

“Spike…” there was a low threat in his voice.

“What do you want me to say?”

“I know it’s hard to talk about, Spike, but listen…”

Greg reached out for him, but Spike stood up, sending the chair flying back behind him.

“At this point, talking about it, thinking about it, I’m just beating a dead--…” Spike stopped.

Rebooted.

“I’ve run the day into the ground. I’ve run every scenario, every angle I can think of. In every single one, I should have died that day instead of Lew,” he told his boss.

“I hear you,” Greg said gently. “I know how you feel. I know it hurts and you feel like you could have—should have—done more. But let me ask you this: are there any scenarios where nobody had to die?”

He thought for a second.

(Ones without landmines, he thought, deep in his subconscious, where he couldn’t quite reach.)

“No,” he answered. “Somebody was going to die. They made sure of that.”

“We don’t know that. You can’t blame yourself for what happened, Spike.”

“It should have been me handling the bomb.”

“You had the other one. What you did saved people—you have to remember that. When you go into the field…” he started.

“I’m good,” Spike answered before he could finish. He looked up at Greg, earnestly and honestly. “Working takes my mind off it. Somebody else’s tragedy over my own, you know? Isn’t it the same for all of us?”

“Ours didn’t happen in the field.”

Spike breathed consciously, steadily, as he leaned over to pick up his chair. He stood standing next to it, pretending to straighten it under the desk. “If I can disable a bomb, it’s almost like I can save Lew. For a second, I don’t feel like I’m suffocating. Boss, there’s nowhere I’d rather be.”

Greg vaguely knew the feeling. He had to make a decision here, they both knew that. “Can I trust you won’t make any mildly suicidal moves, Spike?”

Spike huffed a painful laugh. “Are you making fun of me?”

“I just think it’s very telling that you would say that to me is all.” He cracked a smile. “You’ve got a whole team of people counting on you, Michelangelo. You aren’t alone, you know that, right?”

He waited until Spike nodded.

“We can’t afford to lose you.”

He looked out the door to avoid looking at his boss. A new weight on his shoulders—a responsibility and a different kind of guilt.

He went home trying to determine if the pain in his throat was from guilt or relief.

* * *

With Galina, Spike was excited and scared and he fell in love with his job for the first time since Lew died.

It was the most sophisticated, amazing bomb he’d ever seen. Spike remembered that he loved bombs—that yeah, the job was about saving people, but it was also about bombs and technology and getting to see things nobody else could (or ever would).

Everybody was out safe, except for him and the man who’d created such a beautiful bomb that it sparked something he’d forgotten in himself.

How could he leave that man down here, after he lost that feeling to death once already?

His boss was screaming at him. Sam, too.

He could barely hear him over the rush of thoughts and regrets in his head. Trying to figure out the code to defuse the bomb, he was so close to cracking the code. So close to not abandoning this man, his job, so close to not running away, so close to saving—…

“Galina!”

It was Galina.

The code was the man’s mother.

With Galina, he defused the bomb.

But the elation he felt was cut short by the death of his father. Another person, another relationship he was so close to saving. But this didn’t weigh on his shoulders. He was okay.

He was okay.

* * *

And then there was Natalie.

He wanted so badly to save her.

But at the risk of everybody else? At the risk of his team? His friends?

He couldn’t breathe. He nearly blacked out. It wasn’t because of the pistol whip or the restraints around his chest. No, it was because of the crushing guilt that all of this was _him_. Every mistake was _his_ and he led everybody he cared about into a room full of C4.

It was a miracle they made it out alive.

(Every day was borrowed time.)

Every day was an opportunity to die.

* * *

He couldn’t bear to see Natalie after that. He asked after her often enough that Sam teased him often—and Spike played along, acting like it wasn’t anxious bile building in his stomach that was making him sweat, that it was rather embarrassment and bashfulness.

Greg Parker recognized it. Of course.

He pulled him aside, into the privacy of the locker room after everybody else had left.

“I thought we agreed there would be no mildly suicidal moves, Spike,” he said, his voice low, his brows raised so far up that his forehead was wrinkled underneath his hat.

Spike looked upwards at him like a child would (a father). “I don’t know if I’d say it was mild, to be fair,” he said, half joking.

The look on Greg’s face meant he didn’t think it was funny.

“I was in uniform but, point to me, I wasn’t really in the field.”

“Spike,” he warned.

“I couldn’t stand by and let something happen to her,” he said, honestly this time. The look of pity, of devastation his boss gave him forced Spike to turn away, his knees nearly giving out so he fell heavily onto the bench behind him. Greg kept a hand on his arm to keep him from running. (Did he think he would?) “After Lew, after Mac, and my dad? I thought you guys…” he gulped for air.

“Spike,” he repeated, softer this time.

“Everyone around me is in danger.”

“That’s the job. We signed up for that.”

“No—,” Spike protested, shaking his head so hard that Greg let go of him. “No, Natalie didn’t. My dad knew what I was getting into, that’s why he didn’t—…” Spike mushed the butts of his hands into his eyes.

“It’s been a hard year.” The bench shifted as Greg sat down next to him. “That isn’t your fault, Spike. You can’t keep carrying this on your own.”

“I can’t do anything but carry on,” Spike said. “What else is there?”

“What, indeed?” Greg hummed next to him, a hand still on his shoulder. It felt heavy. But it felt real.

It felt comfortable.

* * *

He thought he was okay. He was okay, for a while.

But then Sam had two minutes on his timer, and it should have been _him there_ , not Sam. Not somebody else again.

And then he heard the blast, the explosion in his ear piece, clear as day (as if he was right there, behind him), and Sam didn’t respond, and it _should have been him, what was he doing here, it should have been him, not Sam._

Greg was in his ear. “Spike, listen to me,” he said, “this isn’t like Lew. You still have a job to do. Spike.”

But the weight had all collapsed with that crash and the world was collapsing beneath Spike’s feet and for just a few seconds, he nearly blacked out. In those few seconds, he saw bodies and heard voices and felt every regret slam into him with the force of the blasts that had killed his friends.

He took a few deep breaths.

Somehow, for _some goddamn reason_ , Spike was still alive.

“I’m here, Boss,” he said. The world came into focus, and he focused on expanding his chest, exhaling, breathing, _don’t let it crush you_.

But then Sam’s voice rang out again: “I’m okay.”

Spike’s knees gave out underneath everything, all the weight, all the guilt.

He was okay.

He was okay.

* * *

And when Spike laid in bed weeks later, fingers intertwined with Winnie’s, he closed his eyes, feeling her body on his. And he quietly, softly, admitted, “everyday I want to die.”

She leaned forward from her spot on his lap, touched their foreheads together. “You won’t always,” she promised.

Underneath her, the pressure of her weight keeping him pinned to the bed, he felt grounded.


End file.
